[Care28]

Hey Everyone! Long time no post! Things have been hectic here and Bella is growing like a WEED. Can you believe she's 5 months old TODAY?! Seems like just yesterday we picked her up from the breeder!

Anyway...onto my questions...

I've done as much research on my own as I can, and I've read the aftercare paper about a million and three times, lol, and I still am having a hard time.

We got Bella spayed on Tuesday (the 11th), her surgery went great and the vet actually said she's a great dog and so easy to work with. She didn't really have that rough a night, whimpered a little bit when held, and slept a lot, but other than that she was fine. The next day though she started to get back to her old self. Which includes trying to jump a lot, run a lot and use her doggy steps. We're trying our hardest to keep her penned quite a bit during the day so she sleeps a lot and isn't that active, but at night and in the mornings we have to let her out for exercise and it's impossible to keep her from doing these things. We HAVE to keep her doggy steps up, otherwise she attempts to JUMP on the couch (most of the time succeeding!) and jump off the couch....which to me are WORSE than using her steps. Is it really that bad if she does? Use her steps that is.

Also, we're keeping a close eye on her incision and haven't really noticed anything out of the ordinary, although she does have redness around the holes of her stitches...it's not redness that looks like it's infected or anything, I'm not sure if it's red because it's healing or what. It's not a bright red...more of a pink. There's no oozing, and she doesn't appear to be in pain at all, but I'm afraid with all of her activity she'll cause an infection...is that possible?

I work from home which m eans I can check on her quite a bit...but I can't hover over her all the time, I haven't noticed her attempting to lick her incision or pull at her stitches, but I'm so afraid that she will eventually start and I won't see her doing it. As time goes on, is this something to worry about if she hasn't started doing it already?

And last question...sorry guys, lol, yesterday she started biting at her backside. We not only had her spayed, but also microchipped and she got the last of her shots, rabies and everything, could that have something to do with it? She acts like it itches..but this morning it looked as if she was trying to chase her nub (tail), lol, could it just be that she just discovered it was there and that I'm just paranoid and it has nothing to do with her surgery or anything?

Okay...the pain is done, lol! Any feedback would be highly appreciated, thanks!